CPJ

2011

Kassahun Yilma left Ethiopia quickly in December 2009. He
didn't have time to save money for the journey, choose a place to go, arrange
housing or a job. He left his wife, his mother, his house and all his friends
behind. Yilma didn't know what lay ahead. He only knew that if he stayed, he
risked becoming a victim of a government-waged campaign against Addis Neger, the newspaper where he
worked as a reporter. "I ran away just
to save my life," says Yilma, "because I was in fear for it."

Press
freedom groups worldwide are banding together today, the International Day to End Impunity, to demand justice for
hundreds of journalists murdered for their work. On this day, the Committee to
Protect Journalists and dozens of other members of the
International Freedom of Information Exchange are remembering journalists killed, and
urging governments to take action against those
responsible for their deaths. We are also looking for lessons learned in past
fights--like the one led by a group of journalists from the San Francisco Bay
area, who battled tirelessly to ensure that justice was served in the slaying
of their colleague Chauncey Bailey.

The Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria might seem like an
odd venue to stage a call for resistance. Nine hundred people in tuxedos and gowns. Champagne and
cocktails. Bill
Cunningham snapping photos. This combination is generally more likely to
coax a boozy nostalgia than foment a revolution. But the journalists honored last night at CPJ's
annual International Press Freedom Awards had a clear message to their
colleagues: Fight the power.

On
November 23, 2009, Esmael Mangudadatu decided to register his candidacy for
governor of Maguindanao, in the southern Philippines. Because his rivals from
the Ampuatan clan had pledged to block him from filing the papers, he
dispatched his female relatives, believing that they would not be harmed. He
also thought it would increase security to invite journalists along, and several
press cars joined the caravan.

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One of the most exciting aspects of working on Internet
technologies is how quickly the tools you build can spread to millions of users
worldwide. It's a heady experience, one that has occurred time and again here
in Silicon Valley. But there's also responsibility that attaches to that
excitement. For every hundred thousand cases in which a tool improves someone's
day, there is another case in which it's used in a life-or-death situation. And
for online journalists working on high-risk material, or in high-risk places, that
life may be their own or that of a source. That's why CPJ, together with Alexey
Tikhonov from Kazakhstan's Respublika,
Esra'a
al-Shafei from the pan-Arab forum MidEast Youth,
and activist Rami Nakhle from Syria, spent this week
visiting and meeting with technologists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers in Silicon
Valley.

Representatives
from U.N. agencies, member states, and nongovernmental organizations convened
on Tuesday at the United
Nations Inter-Agency Meeting on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity
to plan how to address journalist security. Participants of the meeting, which
was convened by UNESCO at its Paris
headquarters, also discussed how the United Nations could promote greater
interaction among its organizations to further improve press freedom around the
world.

By
the late '90s, the Committee to Protect Journalists was solving many of its
financial problems and building a strong list of dependable contributors. It
became possible to consider expanding our activities. Up to this point we were
fighting for a free press around the globe mainly by focusing attention on
governments that were imprisoning or killing journalists. We wrote letters to
hostile governments. We sent board and staff members abroad several times a
year to pressure officials into releasing jailed journalists. We published our
annual book, Attacks on the Press,
and announced our yearly lists of enemies of the press. All of this was vitally
important, of course. We were helping to free and protect journalists by
generating publicity about their cases.

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New York, July 18, 2011--Five distinguished
leaders of new and traditional media worldwide have joined the board of directors
of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The new members--John Carroll, Arianna
Huffington, Jonathan Klein, Mhamed Krichen, and Jacob Weisberg--join a roster of
remarkable journalists and news executives playing a vital role in CPJ's fight
for press freedom.

Mikhail
Beketov can walk now--using an artificial leg and propping himself on crutches. He's
moving around his house in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. It was here, in his
front yard, where the newspaper editor was attacked two years and seven months
ago. It was in this yard where assailants left him for dead. The fact that Beketov can stand on his own again is testament
to the sheer strength of the man, whom friends describe as a born fighter. He
could be obstinate, they say, and that's why he would never turn away from what
he believes in.

The tension between objective news reporting and advocacy
was the subject of the final plenary panel
that I moderated last week at the Global Media Forum in Bonn. Sponsored by
Germany's multi-language, government broadcast agency, Deutsche Welle, the three-day conference brought
together journalists and experts from every continent to address but not
necessarily resolve the media's role in covering human rights abuses.

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New York, June 16, 2011--Sandra Mims Rowe, a
distinguished editor with a record of journalistic and civic leadership, has
been elected chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Rowe
succeeds Paul Steiger,
president and editor-in-chief of ProPublica. Steiger served as CPJ chairman
since 2005.

In conjunction with the release of its special report, “The
Silencing Crime: Sexual Violence and Journalists,” CPJ is issuing an addendum to its existing journalist security
guide. The addendum, written by CPJ Journalist Security Coordinator Frank Smyth, addresses the issue of sexual aggression against
journalists and focuses on ways to minimize the risk.The addendum, published below, is also available
in the full text of CPJ’s online security guide.

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Journalist security is still a maturing field, but news
organizations are devoting more attention to preparing their reporters and
photographers for the dangers particular to the profession. That means
understanding risks that are constantly evolving. The brutal attack on CBS
correspondent Lara
Logan at a Cairo demonstration has drawn worldwide attention to the issue
of sexual
assault against journalists--CPJ issued new
guidelines on the threat today--but the case also points to an emerging, if lesser-known
threat. In the past 18 months, more journalists have been killed covering
violent demonstrations and other non-military events than at any time since CPJ
began keeping detailed records two decades ago.

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I've just returned from a hectic week at SXSW Interactive,
the annual gathering of digital technologists and creators in Austin, Texas.
Conferences like this are often moments of isolation from the rest of the
world, where attendees become consumed with the trivia of the event itself. But
because many of those attending SXSWi are prolific online journalists, bloggers,
and social media users, the conference's self-obsession doesn't stay confined
to Austin. One tech startup even offered a
browser plugin that would hide any Twitter with the
"#SXSW" tags to hide the constant chatter from the rest of the world.

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CPJ
founders and board members along with supporters and friends filed into
Columbia University's Italian Academy on Thursday for a series of events to
mark the 30 years of CPJ's existence. The celebration started with a 20-minute
sneak peek at a feature-length documentary about CPJ that will be released
later this year.

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New York, February
15, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news
that CBS correspondent and CPJ board member Lara Logan was sexually assaulted
and beaten in Cairo on Friday while covering rallies marking the resignation of
Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "We have seen Lara's compassion at work while helping
journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs," CPJ
Chairman Paul Steiger said. "She is a brilliant, courageous, and committed
reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers."

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When we launched the new edition of Attacks
on the Press at the United Nations today, I was hit with questions
about Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Both dealt with what amounts to the same problem:
What do you do when you're asking a government to investigate a crime in which
it might have been the perpetrator?

The Sri Lanka question came first. What is happening in the case of Prageeth Eknelygoda, a critical cartoonist and columnist who disappeared more than a year ago? The question starts around 17:07 on the U.N.'s archived webcast of the event. The Pakistan question, which starts at around 33:55, addresses the case of Umar Cheema, another critical columnist. Both Pakistan and Sri Lanka get ample coverage in this year's Attacks on the Press.

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This afternoon we sent out a press release announcing a
$100,000 grant from the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation to support CPJ's Global Campaign Against
Impunity. The campaign enters its third year in 2011, having achieved some
significant successes, including high-level commitment to prosecute the killers
of journalist in the Philippines
and Russia.
Our goal in the year ahead is to turn those commitments into results.